Picture it, São Paulo, Brazil, October 2015.After one of the sales and customer success workshops I did, a few of us went out for a snack - fried polenta sticks - and to talk shop... and the idea of Success Gaps came up.In particular, we … [Continue reading]

Personally, I've always found it difficult to ask for testimonials. It just doesn't come naturally to me.In fact, one of the reasons I like doing calls on Clarity is that the platform closes the loop with the client for me, asking for a star … [Continue reading]

I talk about Success Milestones all the time, not just in the context of Customer Success, but in the context of the overall success of my SaaS clients and the companies I work with.The concept of Success Milestones is a relatively simple one to … [Continue reading]

A little while ago I introduced the concept of the Success Gap and how customers can use your product to the fullest and still not achieve their Desired Outcome.And as the vendor you can either ignore the phenomenon and let customers fend for … [Continue reading]

Ugh... isn't dealing with customers that don't get it and having to hold their hand along the way or check-in with them to make sure they're okay, annoying? It's so nice when you can hand 'em off to someone else, right?I hear that all the time … [Continue reading]

For SaaS vendors, the Purpose of a Free Trial is to create a customer. Period.If you don't agree with that statement then you really won't like pretty much everything else I'm going to say in this article.Free Trials are not for tire-kicking … [Continue reading]

Também disponível em Português por Mathias LuzOne of the most powerful concepts I've ever come across in business is the idea of the customer's Desired Outcome.And if you're thinking "one of the most powerful concepts in business" seems like … [Continue reading]

"The Seeds of Churn are Planted Early" is a phrase I came up with in early 2013, published shortly thereafter, and have said and used many times since.I wanted to go on record with that - BTW, if you see the term’s use outside of my work or that … [Continue reading]

The mantra of "grow at all costs" - that seems to include acquiring wrong-fit customers (those who aren't your Ideal Customers), churn be damned - has popped up several times lately and my reaction to it is two-fold.First, I immediately thought … [Continue reading]

The common refrain by SaaS experts that think business is just a math problem is that if a customer stays long enough to pay back the cost to acquire them (the metric is called Customer Acquisition Cost or CAC), they became a "profitable" customer … [Continue reading]

How do you define success for your SaaS customers?While it sounds simple, it’s not.Success is only achieved when your customers reach their Desired Outcome by their interactions with your company.But first, you have to understand what it … [Continue reading]

A few months back an article was published that talked about how this popular brain training game (I can't remember what it's called) made their onboarding process MORE complex - not less - and increased their active users by 10%.While the … [Continue reading]

Surveys can be dangerous if used wrong, but can be super-powerful if used correctly!Whether it's the Net Promoter System to gauge customer satisfaction, doing pre-launch customer development work for your startup, or one of the myriad methods we … [Continue reading]

I'm not a psychologist, but I play one every day as I try to figure out why people (users, customers, visitors, etc.) do what they do... and how to get them to do more of what I want them to do.I spend a lot more time reading books about - and … [Continue reading]

After getting a demo of their new product from their Chief Data Officer (Luke Deka) while I was in Poland, I was excited to catch-up with Greg Pietruszynski, CEO of Growbots, when I got back to San Francisco.We talked about lots of different … [Continue reading]

I was talking to my friend Piotr Zaniewicz the other day about the importance of network effects on SaaS businesses.I mentioned how the common misconception around network effects is that, in order to achieve a real network effect (this is the … [Continue reading]

Micky from Kahuna Accounting sent me an email to share that they grew their B2B business from 0 customers/0 revenue to 180 customers and $40k/month ($480k Annually) in just over a year, and a major part of that was their use of the Ideal Customer … [Continue reading]

While just about every B2B SaaS company offers a Free Trial - especially those with self-service sales models - in my experience, the percentage of SaaS companies that feel their Free Trial is "successful" is fairly low.Disappointingly low, … [Continue reading]

I was talking to the CEO of a SaaS startup on Clarity about a dilemma many companies go through.They've decided it's time to get deliberate about their progress and start testing their Ideal Customer Profile... but there's a problem.They … [Continue reading]